Guyanese Among Four Nabbed For Smuggling Humans

CaribWorldNews, TORONTO, Canada, Fri. May 15, 2009: A Guyanese woman, believed to be working with a band of human smugglers, has been busted by Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Savita Singh, 43, of St. Stephen was arrested this week along with Vaughn McLuskey, 71, of Fredericton and Ontario residents Mohammed Habib-Yusef, 53, and Ravindra Hariprasad, 36.

RCMP officers say Singh along with the three others, tried to smuggle in two Guyanese illegally into the U.S. this week.

The RCMP did not release the name of the migrants who were trying to enter the U.S. However, Singh, McLuskey, Habib-Yusef and Hariprasad face charges of criminal conspiracy to violate immigration laws.

The Canadian charges are similar to trouble Singh had in Maine in 2005. That summer, she was arrested by authorities in the United States and subsequently pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle three migrants from Guyana into the U.S. at the Calais border crossing.

At the time she went by the name Savita Singh-Murray. She later was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Bangor to 132 days in jail, which was time served, on the charge.

Judge John Woodcock at the time admonished Singh-Murray for her involvement in what prosecutors suspected was a plot to bring young women into the country to be forced to work as prostitutes.